Maintenance of Rail gap switch 402000

Disassembled and cleaned the rail gap switch. The right picture shows how dirty of the rail gap switch. Because the SF6 gas flowed into the switch everyday, it might conterminated the box. The front window should be clear, however from here nothing could be seen inside. There are 4 pieces of this kind of spark gap used in our large aperture KrF Excimer Amplifier system. The 40 kV high voltages are applied to this spark gap in order to trigger the main high voltage pulses.

This is the cleaned rail gap switch. The front window looks pretty clear. The brass electrodes are shiny, the trigger rail is set in the middle of the electrodes.

We already cleaned and reassembled one spark gap, 3 pieces has been cleaned. Now I am testing the leakage of the finished one.

We installed 2 spark gaps in the North Bank, and one spark gap in the South Bank. The front windows of South Bank also were replaced with brand new windows. Below, the left picture shows the North Bank and the right picture shows South Bank.